UC Berkeley’s Kresge Engineering Library is temporarily closing at the end of finals week, as its home prepares for a sweeping transformation.
The closure, starting at 5 p.m. on Friday, May 12, is prompted by the College of Engineering’s renovation and expansion of UC Berkeley’s Engineering Student Center, which houses the library. The project to transform the Engineering Student Center building will add more community and collaboration space for students; enhance the college’s spaces for academic advising, tutoring, and counseling, as well as its office for diversity, equity, and inclusion; and provide homes for programs supporting entrepreneurship and innovation. Construction is expected to begin this summer and finish in early 2025, at which time the library will reopen.
During the closure of the Engineering Library, students can study at a variety of other libraries nearby, such as Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, Earth Sciences & Map, Mathematics Statistics, East Asian, Moffitt, and Doe. According to Brian Quigley, head of the UC Berkeley Library’s Engineering & Physical Sciences Division, three of those libraries — Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, Earth Sciences & Map, and Mathematics Statistics — will extend their hours.
More than 2,000 recent and highly used volumes are being moved from the Engineering Library to the Mathematics Statistics Library, to ensure seamless access to those materials. Other books are available as e-books or through interlibrary loan.
Berkeley’s engineering librarians will continue to be available to visit classes, offer workshops, meet with students, and answer students’ questions to help them with their course projects and research, Quigley said.
“We’re still here to support you,” he said.
See the hours of operation of UC Berkeley’s libraries, and get help from a librarian.